-- Ideas and Plots --

It's easy to get a flash of inspiration, but it's much more difficult to link the inspiration and the images that appear in your mind into a logical, concrete, and unobtrusive plot.

If you read the outline of the 4 chapters I posted earlier, you should find that the earlier the outline, the more detailed it is, and the later the outline, the rougher and more concise. Many plots lack the necessary emotional and logical foreshadowing, and are filled with a lot of broken images and relatively abrupt twists.

I have observed many authors who have sent outlines, and I think that "the higher the outline, the more detailed it is, and the later the outline, the rougher it is" should be a commonality. It boils down to the fact that the first part is close to the chapter being written and is clearly conceived; The latter part is difficult to predict, and most of them are just a general direction of development and lack of ideas for starting and ending.

During the conception stage of "Lord is Undercover", I added too many elements. During that time, I was drawing inspiration from all kinds of comics, movies, TV series, and games, and adding elements that I came into contact with, thought of, and thought I thought were interesting. And it also designed a worldview that is too large and empty to navigate. All of this is a curse for the future.

Now, if you choose a relatively manageable outline and a short length at the beginning, there may be more room for trial and error.

By the way, I usually write down my inspirations in my phone memo and divide them into categories. But even after a simple categorization, these inspiration fragments are still very confusing, and I don't know if there is a good way to organize them.

——About the "twists and turns"——

After finishing "The Little Pastor", my biggest takeaway is that I know the importance of twists and turns in the story.

When we describe a work as wonderful, we often say that its plot is "ups and downs", and the ups and downs are two aspects of twists and turns; According to Aristotle, discovery and abrupt turn are the main components of the plot, where peripeteia refers to the sudden change of the plot in the opposite direction, that is, from adversity to good, or from good to bad; In online writing, this element is often referred to as "emotional pulling", and the pull in both directions is called emotional upward and emotional downward respectively.

At the time, when I learned about this technique, I was confident that by adding twists and turns frequently, I could make the story interesting and engaging.

So when writing "The Lord is Undercover", I began to try to add twists and turns and ups and downs, even to the point of being a little deliberate, and the situation of the characters frequently goes up and down in a few natural sections.

For example, at the beginning of the story, when faced with the problem of "game design UI", Siefel proposed two solutions to the problem, one was to draw it himself, and the other was to copy the UI of other games, but after each plan was tried, it was immediately rejected. These small twists and turns are everywhere throughout the text, and as soon as they fall together, they immediately return to square one.

For a long time, the plot structure I used in Lords was this:

Start setting a character goal, add about 2-4 difficulties/crises on the way to the goal, and each difficulty/crisis will increase in intensity and surprise, and finally achieve the goal.

The typical process is as follows:

Determine the goal - difficulty 1 - solve the difficulty 1 - difficulty 2 - solve the difficulty 2 - the big crisis - solve the big crisis and achieve the goal

A similar structure, if it's short, it might be only one chapter, and if it's long, it's more than 100,000 words, and it's all over the place.

Here is an example of the early [Yellow Springs Hive] dungeon on the shelves. I'm using this copy as an example, not because it's so well written, but because it's so typical that it's easy to expose the problem.

The process of the Yellow Springs Hive Dungeon is as follows:

Target Determination - Blocked by Map Border (Dilemma) - Cross Border (Dilemma) - Raided by Springs Bee (Dilemma) - Defeat the Raided Springs Bee (Prosperity) - Enter the Hive and Walk into the Reward Room (Harvest) - Face the Colony of Springs (Dilemma) - Hit the Colony (Prosperity) - Powerful Angel Zombies Appear (Great Crisis, Great Dilemma) - Change Target to Survive (Partial Prosperity) - Survive Eventually (Prosperity, End)

After writing this part of the plot, I vaguely felt that something was not quite right. Especially from the time I entered the hive to the plot before the angel zombies appeared, I felt that it was a little less interesting, but I couldn't say why. After all, it was written almost exactly as I needed to.

At that time, I discussed it with a book friend in the group, and his opinion was:

"It's like playing a single-player RPG, it's a little less interactive."

"Between the mobs, the rewards, and the bosses, the sense of déjà vu is too strong."

But after that, I began to vaguely realize that the story didn't seem to be something that could be made compelling by simply adding twists and turns, and that there must be other ways to do it, but I wasn't sure exactly what was missing.

Now it seems that the existing problems are multifaceted and multi-layered. For example, Huangquan Bee cannot be regarded as a "villain" with a complete psychology and shaping, but more like a "wild monster", let alone any hatred, and the interaction between the character and it is too weak. For example, the quest itself lacks "malleability", is too abrupt, and lacks follow-up content to look forward to - if the protagonist group starts out to kidnap a villain and ask him a secret or find out who is behind the villain, this kind of battle will be much more worth looking forward to, because it includes a follow-up discovery puzzle component.

I'll continue to address these elements in the following chapters, where I'll focus on the ups and downs.

As the article became longer and longer, it became clear to me that there was something wrong with mindlessly adding twists and turns.

After about a month on the shelves, I could barely detect any mistakes in the way I had written.

I found that in the above episode, the fate of the characters is basically back to square one after being together, as if they are spinning in circles. Deleting the whole of one rise and one end doesn't seem to have any impact on the whole plot.

Looking at the above example, you will find that the adjacent "up" and "volt" are basically just offsetting, and after the player encounters a dilemma, the next emotional upswing will immediately solve the dilemma; Or, after Siefel thought of a solution for UI design, after a few natural steps to implement the plan, he used an emotional downturn to directly reject the solution.

Taking the Yellow Springs Hive as an example, I can directly weave each adjacent "Qi" and "Fu" into a game level.

Level 1: Across the map

Level 2: Raid of the Yellow Springs Bee (Get Rewards)

Level 3: Face the Yellow Springs Swarm

Level 4: Angel Zombie

This makes it a simple level-based playthrough rather than a more interactive courtbox, sandbox, and open world······

Ah no, it's not even as good as a level-based game. There are a lot of great titles in level-based games, and each level usually lasts for several minutes, not just facing an enemy or a difficulty, but an organic combination of a large number of opponents and dilemmas, and the decisions made at the beginning of the level will have an impact later in the level. Whether Mario ate mushrooms and flowers in the early stage, and whether he planted enough sunflowers in the early stage of Plants vs. Zombies, the impact of this early development decision has a strong follow-up effect.

Truth be told, this kind of example of adjacent ups and downs canceling each other out and returning to the original point together is not really wrong, and it is not uncommon in many good stories. For example, before I wrote this book, I went to listen to the book "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" to draw materials, and there was often such a situation-

A wants to kill B. Foresee what blife will be, and listen to the next breakdown. ”

And then the next time-

"A thought about it/was persuaded and decided not to kill B."

You're playing with my feelings!

The real problem is that [only] this twist and turn in place makes the story boring, and it looks like a step-by-step game, or a reversal for the sake of reversal.

At that time I came to a conclusion:

"The ups and downs should not just spin in place, but should emphasize more phased advancement and development."

This conclusion is not wrong now, but it is very crude and easy to lead people astray. Because I actually don't really know what "phased advancement and development" is. Moreover, players face different enemies one by one and defeat each other one after another; In the trial and error of the protagonist again and again, he finds that other roads do not work and finds the right solution, isn't this a phased advancement and development?

(To be continued)

(End of chapter)